Prison Architect

As many of you are aware, we broke the pathfinding quite severely in alpha13. We introduced a bug which would cause the Deployment screen to show a greyed out world, meaning no sectors had been found. This had the knock-on effect that all pathfinding would fail, grinding your prison to a halt. Everyone would just stand around, looking lost.

We have now released a hotfix that resolves this issue, and a few others. Steam users will be automatically updated (you may need to restart steam).

The new version number in the main menu should be "alpha13b".

Here is a full list of changes in alpha13b:

- Fixed: Critical bug with deployment system, resulting in a failure to subdivide the map into sectors.
This caused most pathfinding within the game to fail, grinding the prison to a halt.
- Fixed: Punishments maxed out at five hours, regardless of what you set in the Policy screen
- Fixed: Patrol positions were not being saved properly
- Fixed: Bug in the laundry system that prevented prisoners from changing into clean uniforms
- There is now a tooltip in the Patrols screen, to make it clearer how to assign guards to patrols

Weeeee-ooooooo, weeeee-oooooo, weeeeee-ooooooo! It’s the news alarm! Prison Architect’s latest update has escaped the seemingly impenetrable holding cell of Introversion HQ and come running to us for somewhere to stash the goods. Ha! Little bastard’s going straight back to the hole once he’s told us everything he knows. Like about the new tunneling system that’s forcing prison redesigns the world over or customisable punishment regimes that finally let you create the fascist nightmare of your dreams. You can take a glance at everything we got out of that scum bucket before we sent him off here or video evidence once you’ve been searched.

*Gavel thumps* “Silence! Bring the prisoner forward. Craig ‘Thomas’ Pearson, you have been found guilty> of being a rubbish Prison Architect. A most serious offense that resulted in a record number of convicted felons escape your shoddily designed hole. As punishment, you are to spend the morning looking at the Steam Workshop, finding lovely prisons that you can compare your weedy efforts to. Then we’ll shoot you or drown you or something. Be off with you, and may Gabe have mercy on your soul.” (more…)

Prison Architect is the world's latest Prison Management Sim. Starting with an empty plot of land you must construct a holding cell with basic water and electricity to house your first batch of prisoners, to buy you enough time to create a proper cell block. You'll need to hire some guards, get some showers built and unless the kitchen is up and running with chefs working away you're going to end up with a riot on your hands. From there you take your prison in which-ever direction you like. A monsterous super-max or comfortable center for rehabilitation, the choice is up to you.

It’s time to rethink your prison layouts! Prisoners can now dig escape tunnels, using tools they’ve stolen from around the prison. They will do their best to dig around buildings and walls (which slow them down), and they will even co-operate and join up their tunnels and dig together to escape quicker. If they manage to tunnel outside your outer wall they will dig up out of the ground in a puff of dirt, and make a run for it. And we don’t have snipers in the game yet, so it’s just tough luck if they make it that far.

An important thing to realise is that when prisoners are tunnelling, they are actually deep underground and often far away from their cell. However you will still see them in bed asleep. If you search a sleeping prisoner who is actually tunnelling, the fallacy will be immediately revealed - his face will be replaced by a papier mache dummy with a face painted on the front, enough to trick your guards into not realising what was happening. The tunnel will be revealed and the prisoner will pop out of the ground wherever he is, and will make a run for it.

You can build new Perimeter Walls around your prison, which are very tall, very deep and very expensive. Prisoners will do their best to tunnel around these, and will only tunnel through them if there is no other escape route - and it will take a long time to do so. However you can’t build pipes and electrical utilities through these walls, so you’ll need to plan where your weak-spots are going to be.

We also continue to work towards better right wing controls over your prison, for those that want them. You can now research and unlock a new “Policy” report, which allows you to set the type and amount of punishment doled out for fighting, stealing, rioting etc. The defaults are set to exactly how it was before, but if you choose to you could throw prisoners in solitary confinement for 24 hours after a fight, if you thought that was appropriate. This will have a seriously detrimental effect on that prisoner and he will not cause any more trouble for quite some time. On top of that, from the new Policy screen you can request automatic searches of prisoners and their cells when they go off the rails. Catch a prisoner with an escape tool? Automatically search his cell.

This month we took a huge step fowards in one of the biggest remaining areas of the game - contraband. Almost every room in the game is now a source of dangerous contraband which prisoners can (and will) steal whilst your back is turned. Workshops used to be a source of near unlimited funds - now they are also a source of hammers, screwdrivers, and electric drills. Medicines from the medical wards, knifes from the kitchen, even booze and cigs from the administrators office. Everything is up for grabs for your light fingered inmates, and those nice visiting relatives can now smuggle in virtually anything for their loved ones. Inmates will smuggle their stolen gear back to their cell, taking care to avoid metal detectors where appropriate, and will stash their shit anywhere they can. You might search an inmate at Yard time and find nothing, but he could have a whole armoury waiting for him back in his cell.

The are four categories of contraband, but many different variants within each category:

- Weapons are a commonly stolen item, especially in dangerous prisons where fights are common. You wont see it until its too late and there are bodies on the floor.

- Tools typically come from the workshop or storage rooms, and will be used to dig escape tunnels in a future alpha

- Narcotics are a commonly desired item for many bored prisoners and will eventually lead to addictions and erratic behaviour

- Luxuries includes anything that makes prison life a little more bearable: a bottle of booze to pass the time, or a mobile phone to call loved ones

There is a new Contraband button in the main toolbar which shows an overlay of all possible sources of contraband within your prison. It also handily tells you which categories each item falls into. Some particularly useful items fall into multiple categories: A screwdriver is a tool but can also double as a weapon.

This month we took a huge step fowards in one of the biggest remaining areas of the game - contraband. Almost every room in the game is now a source of dangerous contraband which prisoners can (and will) steal whilst your back is turned. Workshops used to be a source of near unlimited funds - now they are also a source of hammers, screwdrivers, and electric drills. Medicines from the medical wards, knifes from the kitchen, even booze and cigs from the administrators office. Everything is up for grabs for your light fingered inmates, and those nice visiting relatives can now smuggle in virtually anything for their loved ones. Inmates will smuggle their stolen gear back to their cell, taking care to avoid metal detectors where appropriate, and will stash their shit anywhere they can. You might search an inmate at Yard time and find nothing, but he could have a whole armoury waiting for him back in his cell.

The are four categories of contraband, but many different variants within each category:- Weapons are a commonly stolen item, especially in dangerous prisons where fights are common. You won’t see it until it’s too late and there are bodies on the floor.- Tools typically come from the workshop or storage rooms, and will be used to dig escape tunnels in a future alpha- Narcotics are a commonly desired item for many bored prisoners and will eventually lead to addictions and erratic behaviour- Luxuries includes anything that makes prison life a little more bearable: a bottle of booze to pass the time, or a mobile phone to call loved ones

There is a new “Contraband” button in the main toolbar which shows an overlay of all possible sources of contraband within your prison. It also handily tells you which categories each item falls into. Some particularly useful items fall into multiple categories: A screwdriver is a tool but can also double as a weapon.

Any contraband found by your guards in the past 12 hours will also show up in this screen as a green circle. You will often want to know how that item of contraband made it into the prison, and your guards are now trained to interrogate prisoners and find out this valuable information. Click on any green circle in the contraband screen and you’ll see a trail revealing the origin and history of that particular item of contraband.

Prisoners will steal things if they personally want that item, but sometimes they won’t be able to find what they want. However every prisoner has his ear to the ground, and he knows what items are in demand. If he wants something he can’t get hold of easily, he’ll steal something else with a high market value and plan to trade it later for the item he really wants. For the player, there is a new reports screen showing the Supply and Demand of all types of contraband within your prison. A high demand indicates problems with your prisoners. A high supply indicates an immediate danger.

Alpha 11 has been released! Steam users will be automatically updated.

We spent quite a lot of time this month working on performance enhancements and bug fixes. We found a lot of memory leaks and performance bugs and fixed them, and the end result is the game is running quite a bit smoother. Theres still a lot of work to be done here but things are definately improved.

You can now purchase neighbouring plots of land. Your accountant has to research Land Expansion and then you can click on any edge of your prison land to buy up the neighbouring plot. You can do this as many times as you like, money permitting. We should warn you that we havent fully tested what will happen if you expand to the right of the main road. You can build here but there will always be a section of road on which you cannot build, so youll never be able to join up the two sides. You might find prisoners on one side decide to walk to the other side, then escape when they find themselves on the road. But try it and see!

Weve updated the Objects toolbar to intelligently highlight objects that might be useful, given what you are looking at. So if you are looking at a kitchen, youll see the cooker, fridge and sink are automatically highlighted. As we add more objects to the list the task of finding what you want is getting harder, and this was our shot at fixing that.

Finally we have an entirely new Timelapse recording feature. You can use this to record timelapse videos of your prison being built. Youll find the options to control this under Options -> Timelapse, and you can set how often a frame is captured, and the playback rate of those frames. We export videos to your save folder in OGV (ogg video) format, which can be played by VLC, or imported into youtube, etc. Heres an example of the sort of video you can create:

YouTube™ Video: Prison Architect Timelapse Views: 301Recorded using the brand new feature in alpha11 - record a timelapse of your prison being constructed!

Theres also quite a few bug fixes, and weve fixed the issue of Clothing needs leading to riots. It was almost impossible to have a laundry functioning before your prisoners rioted due to clothing, which seemed a little unfair. This wont happen anymore.

We hope you enjoy alpha 11 - weve got some big things planned for alpha 12 and alpha 13, and well see you in a months time with that. We also did our first ever development livestream during alpha 11, and we are hoping to do more during alpha 12. Sign up to our twitch.tv page to stay notified and watch us developing the game live: www.twitch.tv/introversionsoftware

We spent quite a lot of time this month working on performance enhancements and bug fixes. We found a lot of memory leaks and performance bugs and fixed them, and the end result is the game is running quite a bit smoother. There’s still a lot of work to be done here but things are definately improved.

You can now purchase neighbouring plots of land. Your accountant has to research “Land Expansion” and then you can click on any edge of your prison land to buy up the neighbouring plot. You can do this as many times as you like, money permitting. We should warn you that we haven’t fully tested what will happen if you expand to the right of the main road. You can build here but there will always be a section of road on which you cannot build, so you’ll never be able to join up the two sides. You might find prisoners on one side decide to walk to the other side, then escape when they find themselves on the road. But try it and see!

We’ve updated the Objects toolbar to intelligently highlight objects that might be useful, given what you are looking at. So if you are looking at a kitchen, you’ll see the cooker, fridge and sink are automatically highlighted. As we add more objects to the list the task of finding what you want is getting harder, and this was our shot at fixing that.

Finally we have an entirely new Timelapse recording feature. You can use this to record timelapse videos of your prison being built. You’ll find the options to control this under Options -> Timelapse, and you can set how often a frame is captured, and the playback rate of those frames. We export videos to your save folder in OGV (ogg video) format, which can be played by VLC, or imported into youtube, etc. Here’s an example of the sort of video you can create:http://youtu.be/Ow2BUfRfxc8

There’s also quite a few bug fixes, and we’ve fixed the issue of Clothing needs leading to riots. It was almost impossible to have a laundry functioning before your prisoners rioted due to clothing, which seemed a little unfair. This won’t happen anymore.

We hope you enjoy alpha 11 - we’ve got some big things planned for alpha 12 and alpha 13, and we’ll see you in a months time with that. We also did our first ever development livestream during alpha 11, and we are hoping to do more during alpha 12. Sign up to our twitch.tv page to stay notified and watch us developing the game live: www.twitch.tv/introversionsoftware

Alpha 10 has been released! Steam users will be automatically updated.

Here is our alpha10 video demonstrating the new features. This video is a bit longer than usual because we had quite a lot of new content to show, and the prison riot at the end took quite a while to sort out. We think it’s totally worth it though!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AvyvTYhB-E

We’d like to start by welcoming all you lovely new Linux users to our game. We are now supplying builds for Linux via steam and as a standalone download from our website. (Free to all users of course). The game should be widely compatible across the various Linux distributions, but please let us know if you have problems by logging bugs in our bug tracker. We have targeted Ubuntu 12.04 (32 bit and 64 bit) as a starting point, and we anticipate wider compatibility in later alphas. Please note that we do require glibc 2.15 or later, which unfortunately means Prison Architect does not currently work on Debian Stable.

We are continuously blown away by some of the prisons our community build. Layouts that we’d never considered, or packing an entire jail into 12x12 squares, or nightmarish concrete hellholes. Now you can share your best prisons with the rest of the world via the Steam Workshop. From the main menu in game you can access our workshop integration, and from there you can publish your prison, or play other peoples prisons at the click of a button. To browse the full list of published prisons click on “Open Steam Workshop”, and you’ll see the Steam Overlay popup with thumbnails of each jail. Click on the green plus to subscribe to a prison, and from then on it will show up in your game list as a playable prison. If the original author updates his prison you will get those updates automatically via steam workshop. We’d like to encourage you all to publish your best prisons - we really want to see what you’ve built with our game.

In the UK milk has to be labelled with “Allergy warning: contains milk”, and in a similar vein we think we are stating the obvious when we say that Steam Workshop integration is only available in the Steam build.

Our most significant change to the game itself comes in the form of an entirely new anger model. We have fundamentally changed the way prisoners get angry and express their anger through violence. Conceptually there is now a prison-wide “Thermometer”, which represents the overall danger level of your prison. It increases over time when you have a lot of angry prisoners (ie their needs are not met). Conversely, when prisoners feel they are well treated they will decrease the overall danger level of the prison. Over time as the anger level rises, more and more prisoners will start to kick off. Other factors affect this danger level as well - punishing a lot of prisoners acts as a deterrent, decreasing the danger level. Riot police on site act as an antagoniser, increasing the danger level. You can see all of this in the status bar at the top of the screen. (Note: Requires the Chief)